I really think the study of semantics is interesting. Now, to be clear, I'm not interested in studying semantics; from what I understand about it, I'd rather stuff a angry raccoon in my pants than pick up a textbook on semantics (that is, from what I understand about semantics, not the raccoon thing. Textbooks on things in general tend to induce a deep dream-like state in me). But I'm happy that there are people that like to study that sort of thing, to keep track of it for the rest of us.

I mention it because I want to make my own contribution to the field, and I'm hoping that someone who reads the blog will know who to talk to about it. It's about the difference between "things" and "stuff." Most of us (I don't want to make any broad generalizations - I'll just talk about me) I've got a fair amount of both. One way you can tell is that I no longer open my closets for fear of not ever being able to close them again. But volume is not what I want to talk about here: I have recently made a decision that, semantically speaking, "things" are objects you *need*, whereas "stuff" are objects you *want*. What follows is a breakdown of my relationships with objects, in re: things vs. stuff.

Objects In My Future
Things	Stuff
Mattress / Boxspring Frame for above Mechanical Pencils A sublet for Oct / Nov A cheap 2-BR place in Astoria	A date with the cute girl on my floor at work Peace in the Middle East

(First let me clarify that entry in the "Stuff" column. She works on my floor at my building. She is not actually on the floor of my office. A cursory consideration might suggest like that's the first step towards getting the date, but it would actually just be kind of creepy)

Now, I bring this up because I want you all to notice how very short is the list of Stuff I want. It's pretty short. I've recently made a decision that I'm done buying stuff for a while. I've got pretty much everything I need want (sorry, this takes some getting used to), and I think that I can sit down and let my checkbook take a deep, well-deserved breath. None of the things in my Stuff column can be bought (I am, of course, leaving myself open to the inevitable follow-up joke "Kennyb can't even buy a date with this girl," I realize), and so now I'm going to embark on a journey of self-righteous anti-materialism (now that I have all the stuff I want, I can safely cast off the shackles of materialistic desires).

I started thinking about this, of course, because of (for those of you who follow the AutoTF blog, you'll note) the conspicuous absence of the entry "iPod" in either the stuff or the things column. This is because I'm the happiest boy in Muddville, having not only bought this little slice of heaven, but gotten it working as well. It was kind of a disaster for a while, what with it not synching properly to my computer. But it turns out that it was entirely my fault, having spend hundreds of dollars on a new toy, and then trying to save $10 on a cheap firewire card. Once I traded in the crappy card for a better one, the songs were being transferred by the thousands (For everyone's benefit, I'm going to leave out the painful hours of rebooting my XP machine, not having the iPod being recognized by my computer, the travesty that is MusicMatch, the late nights (well, just one night, but it was late enough for two) of gnashing my teeth and watching Conan O'Brian, etc).

All the time spent, and frustration vented on the punching bag in the basement were all completely vindicated by my walk around the city on Saturday, however. I have reached one of my life goals - to have a constant soundtrack to my life. My next goals for the iPod include finishing ripping the 80 or so cds I have left, fixing rogue id3 tags, and making hundred song playlists so I'm not chained to the capriciousness of shuffle. Oh, and setting up an ftp for Ben to download my 1GB of Nine Inch Nails records. Which he doesn't want to do, but until I see that all of them have been downloaded, I'm not giving him access to any of the rest of the drive.